Fan Kuan

CHINA, Shaanxi, Tongchuan; Northern Song dynasty

Fan Kuan, whose original name was Zhongli, was a painter born in Huayuan (present day Yaozhou, Tongchuan). Due to his kind and magnanimous nature, he was fondly addressed as Kuan, which means “magnanimous.”
Fan began his painting career by studying the works of Li Cheng and Jing Hao. He later secluded himself in the mountains to fully immerse himself in nature. In Xuanhe Catalog of Paintings, Fan is described as a master who creates landscapes that exhibit such great depth and undulations that it gives one a sense of being transported directly into the scene he is depicting. His skills in landscape painting are said to be comparable to that of Guan Tong and Li Cheng, and together with Li Cheng and Dong Yuan, he is known as one of the Three Masters of Landscape Painting from the Northern Song dynasty Northern Song dynasty (960–1127).
Works by Fan feature bold brushstrokes which are used to illustrate vast boulders, interspersed with “raindrop textured strokes” to give cliff faces form. The scenes are often surrounded by dense foliage and ink-wash technique is used to create streams and mist.
58 of Fan’s paintings are listed in Xuanhe Catalog of Paintings. Another 30 are documented in History of Painting. One of his most well known works is Travelers Among Mountains and Streams, a piece comprising a massive central vertical cliff surrounded by smaller ones. The painting includes a small traveling merchant and mule, amid streams, trees, boulders, and a temple in the foreground. In the background, the majestic mountains and their immense natural power are further magnified by the contrast in sizes.